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Wednesday, May 22, 2013, 3:15 pm

A Budget That Tightens Belts by Emptying Stomachs

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San Antonio Food Bank workers Sergio Baiz (right) and Ed Rivas (left) prepare to cook mashed potatoes that will be served to low-income students. Under the House of Representatives' new budget, food assistance will be cut by $20.5 billion over 10 years. (U.S. Department of Agriculture / Flickr / Creative Commons).

A time-honored tactic of conservative lawmakers is to “starve the beast”by defunding government programs. In the case of food stamps—the quintessential whipping boy for budget hawks—they’re going a step further by trying to starve actual people.

The House of Representatives and Senate have proposed the United States “tighten our belts” by slashing billions of dollars from poor people’s food budgets. The main mechanism for shrinking the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding is the removal of “categorical eligibility.” Basically, most states have used this policy to streamline enrollment: Families are made eligible for food stamps based on their receipt of other benefits, such as housing or childcare subsidies. That often means broadening eligibility for working-poor families or those with overall household income or savings that exceeds regular, stricter thresholds for qualifying for food stamps.

Now the House and Senate farm bill proposals, particularly the House plan, seek to “save” billions more by cutting categorical eligibility. Under the House farm bill budget, which cuts $20.5 billion in SNAP over 10 years, benefits would be eliminated for “nearly 2 million low-income people, mostly working families with children and senior citizens,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). (The Senate bill also cuts SNAP but only by about $4 billion over 10 years). In addition, the cuts would devastate poor students, because SNAP eligibility has enabled 210,000 low-income children to qualify for free school meals. That means more hunger pangs for kids in the cafeteria, and an emptier refrigerator waiting for them at home. Meanwhile, their working-poor parents may find themselves buying cheaper, less nutritious food to stretch budgets, or turning to the local food pantry, or facing cruel trade-offs like delaying rent payments to pay for groceries or leaving a health problem untreated.

According to Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy with the CBPP, the House proposal would end up cutting food stamps for people who hold minimal assets--poor families who have held onto a car to get to work, for example, or with savings just above $2,000. So at a time when wealth has declined for 93 percent of households, poor families who have built up a modest nest egg may be rewarded with the indignity of hunger. The typical food stamp family doesn’t fit the stereotype of the shiftless poor or “welfare queens,” Dean explained via email:

A typical working family that qualifies for SNAP benefits due to categorical eligibility is a mother with two young children who has monthly earnings just above the program’s monthly gross income limit ($2,069 for a family of three in 2013). On average, the families above that limit who qualify for SNAP as a result of categorical eligibility have combined child care and rent costs that exceed half of their wages. The approximately $100 per month in SNAP benefits they receive covers about one-fourth to one-fifth of their monthly food budget.

In addition to bumping people out of categorical eligibility, the House proposal would hit the so called “heat and eat” policy — a mechanism used by some states to coordinate heating assistance payments with food stamps. As a result, according to the CBPP, “about 850,000 low-income households, which include about 1.7 million individuals, would lose an average of $90 a month in SNAP benefits.”

All these cuts are absurdly out of sync with economic realities of the working poor. (They’re also heaped on top of a current cut to food stamps due to the expiration of a temporary boost from the federal stimulus package.) Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) estimatesthat over one-sixth of the population faces hardship in securing an adequate food supply--with appalling rates of food insecurity among black and Latino households. And among those who can afford to keep their pantries stocked, many are still too poor to afford healthy, fresh food. Food stamps just dent that gap in food security, with monthly payments averaging a luxurious $280 per household.

Far from supplementing welfare “dependency,” SNAP actually supports work. According to the CBPP, “Among SNAP households with at least one working-age, non-disabled adult, more than half work while receiving SNAP—and more than 80 percent work in the year prior to or the year after receiving SNAP.” FRAC reports that overall, “SNAP typically boosts low-wage workers’ income by 10 percent or more,” which in turn helps stimulate the economy overall.

So that’s the theme of this year’s budget debate: that millions of people can’t afford to eat is not a cause for alarm for politicians so much as a burdensome line item. And erasing public benefits make it easier to make the poor invisible in the public mind. After all, food stamps symbolize not only the failure of “free markets” but the power of social policy to reduce endemic human suffering. For millions of Americans, that monthly food allowance is an unsavory reminder of the consequences of social disinvestment: no matter how hard you work, at the end of the day, you’ll still be hungry.

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Michelle Chen is a contributing writer at In These Times and The Nation, a contributing editor at Dissent and a co-producer of the "Belabored" podcast. She studies history at the CUNY Graduate Center. She tweets at @meeshellchen.

Daniel, I believe the world is on to us and has been on to us since I lived in Brazil in the 1950s. That was where I was "complimented" by the Brazilians saying, "You don't act like an American. You act more like a Brazilian."

Posted by grannieannie2 on 2013-07-07 12:08:34

They need that money to keep funding the 'Wars for Wall Street and Israel,' planned to keep going for another 4 decades.

Posted by LeseMajeste on 2013-05-24 22:29:51

Are we really that low as to starve the poor and elderly so we can continue to be big shots in the world.

Posted by Daniel Swanson on 2013-05-24 10:19:46

I remain amazed at the ignorance of Americans. Welfare ended by 1996, and it's surprising how many people somehow didn't notice that. TANF is a job program that enables businesses to utilize super-cheap workfare replacement labor. It is not an entitlement; you might or might not be placed in a job, regardless of need. Food stamps certainly aren't a "handout." Recipients, themselves, have paid/will pay into the system via their own taxes before and/or after their time on food stamps, and they and their families pay for those benefits in this way. It takes stunning ignorance to refer to lives of hunger, fear and deprivation as a mere "lifestyle choice" deserving of punitive measures. Today, most food stamp recipients are the elderly, disabled and children in poverty.

Posted by DHFabian on 2013-05-23 19:56:57

So long as the rich get their tax cuts, and are able tobribe, sorry contribute to the government when they want to. As Pamela Sampson said aafter the death of Chavez: Chavez invested Venezuela's oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world's tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi. Der, she's a clever girl isn't she!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by dragmex on 2013-05-23 19:14:49

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